Work backwards & cognitive dissonance

My current hero is Dan Marsh. Dan is a business analyst who has just finished his apprenticeship at my client. Dan had the courage to say that what I taught about Feature Injection’s working backwards (That tea bag stuff) actually scared him. Subsequently we had a great session to understand what he found so scary. As a result we came up with the following approach to explain “Work Backwards”. I will explain the subtle but important changes at the end.

We are skipping the “Hunt the value” or “OO” part of Jennie’s “OOPSI” model. And lets assume we have designed one or more “Output” that satisfies our “Outcome” (Design Brief – “We satisfy the “Need” of a “Group of Customers” and as a result the business received value which we measure using a “Metric”).

Consider the Design Brief (As a “Super Fan” I have a need to know “where my favourite celebrities went to school and played their first gigs so that I can go on a pilgrimage” and as a result the company will get more “Super fans”). So the product squad have collaborated on and tested and user tested designs to the point they have an experiment they want to scale out to more of the “Super fans”.

The design they come up with is “A mobile phone app to enable you to do a walking tour of a city to see all the locations where your favourite celebrity lived and played). Something like…

We create an initial Epic to build the experimental product. “Mobile App One to meet Design Brief”. Normally at this point we would break the Epic into stories. Instead we write the Acceptance Criteria using the Given-When-Then format. We start with the Value in creating our value stream. the thing that gives value to the customer, the THEN…

THEN the application displays a map

AND the current location is at the center of the map

AND the location of celebrity sites

AND the name of the important celebrity sites

So what are the things that could go wrong? Lets consider these as TODO’s that we will come back to in this Epic or more likely in other Epics.

TODO – The centre of the maps is a specified location (e.g. Zip/Post Code)

TODO – There are no celebrity sites (An arrow at the edge of the map indicating direction of closest site?)

TODO – There are no important celebrity sites

We now consider when the app displays the map. The normal response is to suggest when the app is opened. Alternatively it could be when the phone is near to one of the sites.

WHEN the phone is within the specified distance

And another TODO which will almost certainly go into another Epic.

TODO – When the app is opened.

We need to update the THEN as well to include an alert.

THEN the application displays a map

AND the current location is at the center of the map

AND the location of celebrity sites

AND the name of the important celebrity sites

AND the phone alerts the user

Now we can look at the necessary conditions for this to happen.

GIVEN user has selected a celebrity

AND there are celebrity sites nearby

AND user has marked celebrity site as important

AND user has enabled location services

AND user has enabled alerts

AND the user is logged in.

With an associated set of TODOs that go in additional Epics…

TODO user has not selected a celebrity

TODO there are no celebrity sites nearby

TODO user has not marked celebrity site as important

TODO user has not enabled location services

TODO user has not enabled alerts

TODO user is not logged in

Each GIVEN becomes a THEN in another scenario… For example

THEN the user has selected a celebrity

WHEN the user “snapz” the celebrity

GIVEN the user has selected a celebrity site

AND the user is logged in

… with associated TODOs, And the GIVEN in this scenario becomes a THEN in another scenario.

THEN the user has selected a celebrity site

WHEN the user “snapz” a celebrity site

GIVEN the user is viewing the map

AND a celebrity site is visible on the map

AND the user is logged in

… with associated TODOs (Only a couple mentioned)

TODO – User is looking at the list of celebrities.

TODO – User selects a band with more than one member.

And the GIVEN in this scenario becomes a THEN in another scenario.

THEN the user is logged in

WHEN the user presents their thumb print to the phone

GIVEN the user has entered the app

AND has registered using their thumb print

TODO – User name and password… because everyone does it that way. Just like putting the engine at the front of the car because people are used to seeing the horses before the cart, and like the idea of putting the “Cart before the horse”.

We can visualise the pattern of the scenarios evolving from the output to the inputs as follows:

Which we can summarise as:

And then we can reveal the pattern more clearly if we zoom out even further (and I’ve changed the TODO’s to clear boxes) as follows:

This is the insight that Dan Marsh gave me. This is a natural way for people to work, from left to right. That means the output is on the left and the inputs are on the right which is contrary to the way I have represented this in the past. Also the natural way to write for THEN-WHEN-GIVEN is top to bottom whereas I have been teaching them to write GIVEN-WHEN-THEN from bottom to top which is also counter to the way people think. The right to left representation that confused people is below:

Dan also helped me understand the follow representation that I had used was also confusing.

So from now on, the process flow to write scenarios is left to right, top to bottom, with the arrows pointing left to right.

Thank you Dan for being honest about your thoughts. I think this is a huge insight. 🙂

From now on, I’m going to remove the cognitive dissonance. From now on, Its all about working forward from the output to the inputs.

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About theitriskmanager

Currently an “engineering performance coach” because “transformation” and “Agile” are now toxic.
In the past, “Transformation lead”, “Agile Coach”, “Programme Manager”, “Project Manager”, “Business Analyst”, and “Developer”.
Did some stuff with the Agile Community. Put the “Given” into “Given-When-Then”. Discovered “Real Options”
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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 11th, 2017 at 9:42 pm and posted in Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

TMO, you have been working backwards and just now switched to, what Steven Covey calls, Begin With The End in Mind. Just like OKRs start with objectives, objectives start with strategy, and strategy starts with vision.

One more thought: what about replacing TODO with LATER. It sets the proper mindset with all stakeholders by meaning: “We did think about it, but we’ll maybe pick this up later, some day in the future.”